NOVO-OGARYOVO, Russia: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of Russia on Thursday accused Ukraine of having sent weapons and military personnel to assist Georgia during its war with Russia.

The accusation came as Russia announced a memorandum of understanding for handling natural gas sales to Ukraine after Putin met with the Ukrainian prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko.

The timing of the Russian prime minister's statements underscores a drive in Moscow to increase its leverage in Ukraine, a former Soviet republic.

Without referring to the Ukrainian president by name, Putin suggested that President Viktor Yushchenko had authorized weapons supplies to Georgia before and during Russia's war there in August. He also said that Ukrainian military personnel had fought on Georgia's side during the conflict.

As the US bailout plan is put to a revote, the EU is haggling over a large-scale rescue deal of its own after several European banks were saved this week. Just how similar are the plans -- and will they help?

The banking crisis spread to Germany this week when the German government offered a lifeline to commercial mortgage lender Hypo Real Estate as it teetered on the verge of collapse.

The news came on the same day that the United States House of Representatives failed to pass the $700 billion (500 billion-euro) bailout plan proposed by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson. That plan has since been approved by the Senate, with a few alterations, including up to $100 billion in tax break extensions for middle class families and businesses.

The German government has come up with a similar plan to bail out Hypo Real Estate, albeit a slightly less expensive one. On Thursday, the European Commission gave the go-ahead for the 35 billion-euro deal.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Moscow has expressed confidence that talks on a new EU-Russia partnership treaty - temporarily put on ice due to Russia's military presence in Georgia - could be resumed in October.

"We are certainly looking forward to the resumption of negotiations ... I see no reason why this should not happen before the end of this month," Russian ambassador to the EU Vladimir Chizhov said on Thursday (2 October).

Moscow - mending ties with Germany and hoping to restart EU talks

EU leaders agreed on 1 September to postpone talks on an EU-Russia strategic deal until Russian troops withdraw from Georgia's territory to lines held before the short war over South Ossetia erupted in August.

According to Mr Chizhov, the condition, part of an EU-brokered peace plan, is being "successfully implemented" and all Russian troops will return to previous positions before 10 October.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - European women should get a minimum of 18 weeks of maternity leave paid at the full level of their previous salary, the EU executive has suggested.

The move comes as part of a package of the European Commission's proposals aiming to help people balance their professional and family life.

Brussels argues the new rules would improve the family life of Europeans

The new legislation "will help women to combine work and family life, improving their and their family's quality of life," EU social affairs commissioner Vladimir Spidla told journalists as he was presenting the package in Brussels on Friday (3 October).

Under the proposal, there would be an extension of maternity leave from fourteen to eighteen weeks across the member states, with the current period varying from 14 weeks in Germany to 28 weeks in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, with the possibility of extending it to 52 weeks in some countries.

The Council of Europe has urged European governments to protect Guantanamo Bay detainees who have been cleared of terrorist links but who risk persecution when they return home.

In a statement on their Web site, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) said it was worried about the fate of Guantanamo detainees who have been cleared of all suspicion of terrorist activity, but who cannot return to their home countries because they would risk persecution.

The statement continued by urging European governments, who have called on the US to shut down the detention center for terrorist suspects in Guantanamo Bay, "to let deeds follow their words and provide humanitarian protection for detainees who cannot return to their home countries."

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has warned that the French press faces "death" unless it comes up with new ways to compete with multimedia and free rivals.

French newspapers are among the least profitable in Europe, with combined daily circulation figures of 8 million - half that of Britain.

Sporting daily l'Equipe and regional paper Ouest France are the most read. Their combined turnover plunged from 1.145billion euros (£897 million) in 2000 to 848 million euros (£664 million) last year, according to a recent parliamentary report.

Prestigious daily Le Monde has seen strikes and lay-offs, as has the conservative Le Figaro, while there have been takeovers at left-wing Liberation and the business titles La Tribune and Les Echos.

Meanwhile, internet news and freesheets like Metro and 20 Minutes are now the country's most read media.

Magazines are faring slightly better, with women's weeklies and glossy gossip titles doing well.

CHIUSI, Italy: On a crisp fall morning just after Ramadan, Hysen and Kimete Murrizi stood side by side in a Tuscan vineyard, snipping fat bunches of grapes into red plastic buckets.

They worked their way quickly down a sloping hillside, picking grapes for Chianti, after having spent days selecting smaller grapes for more refined wines. On the nearby highway, passing truckers honked in a harvest greeting.

The Murrizis are among tens of thousands of Albanians who arrived in Italy in the 1990s after the collapse of their country's Communist dictatorship and economy. That they should become skilled vineyard workers is somewhat incongruous because Murrizi is an observant Muslim who fasted for Ramadan and does not drink alcohol.

She acknowledged the culture clash. "Yes," Murrizi said with a warm smile in fluent Italian. "But that's the way it is. Unfortunately I have to work. Life is like that."

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - In a surprise move, European Union trade commissioner Peter Mandelson is to leave his position with the EU's executive and take up the position of secretary of state for business in UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown's reshuffled cabinet.

Mr Mandelson, a longtime antagonist of Mr Brown's faction within the UK Labour Party, has been asked to return to London to help the prime minister grapple with the current financial crisis.

Commissioner Mandelson is to rejoin the UK cabinet

Having twice resigned from the UK government under the cloud of corruption allegations, Mr Mandelson is reportedly to be offered a peerage so he may sit at the cabinet table.

Seven Russian soldiers were killed and seven others wounded in an apparent car bombing in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia on Friday, Russian news agencies reported.

The blast took place in the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali, next to a Russian army installation, reported Interfax news agency, citing South Ossetian authority sources.

The powerful blast damaged the Russian infantry building and blew out windows in surrounding structures up to a half a kilometer away, Interfax reported.

Officials in the rebel province said the incident occurred after a suspect automobile was confiscated from Georgian citizens by Russian soldiers. The four-wheel-drive vehicle turned out to be packed with explosives and blew up near the soldiers' military base.

Back in July, the European Commission proposed new EU-wide anti-discrimination legislation. While several of the member states are in favor of more EU control, others, including Germany, aren't so sure.

German Family Minister Ursula von der Leyen spoke out against the strengthening of current EU regulations in this area during a meeting with her European counterparts in Luxembourg on Thursday.

Supported by Italy, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Greece, she accused the EU Commission of exceeding its authority.

Spain, Great Britain, the Benelux nations, Austria and Sweden, by contrast, all stood behind the Commission.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU states have agreed to invite Belarus foreign minister Sergei Martynov to a prestigious meeting in Brussels, as the French EU presidency struggles to counter Russian diplomacy on the union's eastern fringe.

The Belarusian minister is to take part in a "troika" gathering with EU foreign relations chief Javier Solana, external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner and French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner on 13 October, on the margins of a wider EU foreign ministers' meeting on the same day.

The Belarusian foreign minister is to take part in a "troika" gathering with EU top foreign policy officials

Senior EU diplomats made the decision in Brussels on Friday (3 October), with Mr Kouchner's office set to rubber-stamp the move before a formal invitation goes out. A previous suggestion to bring Mr Martynov to Paris in September was judged premature at the time.

The formal invitation may be made before Monday, when Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin plans to visit Minsk, in order to show Belarus that the EU is taking seriously its latest offer of a rapprochement with the West.

The leaders of the EU's four biggest states - Germany, France, Britain and Italy - are gathering for emergency talks on the financial crisis in Paris on Saturday (4 October), one day after US lawmakers are expected to vote for the second time on an amended bail-out plan for the country's financial sector.

Nicolas Sarkozy has invited his counterparts from Britain, Germany and Italy for talks about the deepening financial crisis

European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso on Thursday welcomed the approval of the package by the American Senate, which had enabled another attempt to hammer out the bill in the House of Representatives and described it as "a good step forward in the right direction."

But after receiving negative signals from both Berlin and London on the idea of a similar emergency fund worth €300 billion for Europe's banking sector, French president Nicolas Sarkozy distanced himself from the proposal.

"I deny the sum and the principle," he said, according to media reports. An official in French finance minister Christine Lagarde's office added that "there was an exchange of ideas but no French proposals. There was no French plan," AFP says.

Poland has claimed that it has assembled enough votes to block a landmark EU climate change agreement after spearheading a revolt by Eastern European states that fear the package would increase their dependence on Russian natural gas supplies.

EU Environment Commissioner: world can reach climate change agreement

UK accused of blocking EU green energy laws

EU could save £20bn per year on health by cutting emissions

A six nation bloc on the EU's eastern fringes signed a pact to fight a proposal designed to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by a fifth by 2020.

The target represents the EU's landmark initiative to address the pressures of climate change and would return the continent's output of CO2 to 1990 levels.

Poland has led efforts to fend off adoption of the package. An aide to the country's environment minister, Maciej Nowicki said Greece had joined the opposition, alongside Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria,

"Poland's Environment Minister signed in Greece an agreement referring to the climate package," Joanna Mackowiak, a ministry spokeswoman said. "We have the blocking minority."

Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding argued in a speech at the Safer Internet Forum in Luxemburg today that social networking sites can have a positive impact on European industry by boosting productivity and internal communications.

"The result is that clients are for the first time truly engaged in a company's product innovation and development services, which should eventually lead to an increased client loyalty and more purchases," she said.

One of Israel's leading left-wing academics tells The Telegraph the future of the Israeli state is threatened as much by Jewish terrorism as it is by Palestinian militancy.

Professor Zeev Sternhell knows as much as anyone about the current threat from Jewish terrorism.

His right leg is recovering from shrapnel caused when a bomb, believed to have been the work of right-wing Jewish extremists, exploded outside the front door of his Jerusalem apartment last week.

While Arab-Jewish violence is common, the attack on the 73-year-old historian has shocked public opinion in Israel because all the evidence points to it being intra-Jewish.

"I consider it an act of Jewish terrorism," he said in an interview from the modest apartment where the bomb exploded.

The glass front door is still broken and the wall plaster pitted with shrapnel marks.

His trenchant criticism of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and, in particular, Jewish settlers who make their home there in defiance of international law make him a hate figure for some Israeli right-wingers.

WASHINGTON: The U.S. House of Representatives gave final approval Friday to the $700 billion bailout for the financial system, reversing course to authorize what may be the most expensive U.S. government intervention in history.

The vote was 263 to 171, with a number of Democrats and Republicans switching sides to give the rescue package a majority. More Republicans continued to oppose the measure than support it, however.

The Senate approved the plan Wednesday night by 74 to 25, after adding a portfolio of popular tax provisions. The bill now heads to President George W. Bush, who has promised to sign it.

Financial markets had a positive but hardly exuberant response to the House action and the prospect that the Federal Reserve would also move to cut interest rates to help the ailing economy. Just after the bill was approved, the Dow Jones industrial average was up about 115 points.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan: War has come to Pakistan, not just as terrorist bombings, but as full-scale battles, leaving Pakistanis angry and dismayed as the dead, wounded and displaced turn up right on their doorstep.

An estimated 250,000 people have now fled the gunship helicopters, jets, artillery and mortar fire of the Pakistani Army, and the assaults, intimidation and rough justice of the Taliban who have dug into Pakistan's tribal areas.

About 20,000 people are so desperate that they have flooded over the border from the Bajaur tribal area to seek safety in war-torn Afghanistan. Many others are crowding around this northwest Pakistani city, where staff members from the UN refugee agency are present at nearly a dozen camps.

The International Committee of the Red Cross flew in a special surgical team from abroad last week to work alongside Pakistani doctors and help treat the wounded in two hospitals, so urgent has the need become.

From the "you can't make this up" file, a McCain foreign policy adviser claimed today that the candidate's decades-long interest in Latin America is exemplified by the fact that he had a girlfriend in Brazil 50 years ago while he was in the Navy:

As I write, however, the Bailout that Americans don't want is returning, this time weighed down with pork barrel sweeteners for everyone from NASCAR track owners to environmentalists. A few minutes ago, it passed: so 21st Century America's brush with democracy may have been a brief experiment.

But wasn't it fun while it lasted?